This documentation does not apply to the most recent version of Splunk.
This documentation applies to the following versions of Splunk: 3.0 , 3.0.1 , 3.0.2 , 3.1 , 3.1.1 , 3.1.2 , 3.1.3 , 3.1.4
Starting with version 3.1.1, Splunk provides a utility that will update your system boot configuration so that Splunk starts when the system boots up. This utility will create a suitable init script (or make a similar configuration change, depending on your OS).
As root, run
splunk enable boot-start
If you don't start Splunk as root, you can pass in the -user parameter to specify which user to start Splunk as. For example, if Splunk runs as the user bob, then as root you would run
splunk enable boot-start -user bob
If you want to stop Splunk from running at system startup time, run
splunk disable boot-start
More information is available in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/init.d/README and if you type help boot-start from the command line.
If you are using a version that is older than 3.1.1, refer to the README in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/init.d for instructions on how to modify your startup configuration so that Splunk starts up at boot time.
If Splunk is running as non-root, you must modify the startup script to use sudo. See Running as a non root user for more information.
Note: This is only true for versions older than 3.1.1. The boot-start command does this automatically with the -user flag.